This invention relates to vending machines and more particularly to vending machines for newspapers, though the invention is not solely restricted to machines for the selling of newspapers.
To overcome the increased cost of employing labour to sell newspapers the use of honesty boxes or vending machines has become widespread.
Unfortunately, honesty boxes have led to monetary losses for the vendor as certain members of the public tend to take the newspaper without paying or only paying part of the total cost. The vending machine has provided a cheap and effective method of selling newspapers which goes some way to prevention of the newspapers being taken without payment.
One type of vending machine has been reasonably successful and this consists of a newspaper support rack covered by a transparent cover. The cover is locked by a mechanism which releases on insertion of the required coinage into slots provided. On release the cover is hinged away and a paper can be removed. The locking mechanism automatically latches on closing of the cover preparatory for the insertion of further coins.
Whilst the machine in question has been reasonably successful a problem has arisen with the feeding of coins to and their positioning in the release mechanism which leads to the mechanism jamming. Thus the buying public tend to shy away from the vending machine and purchase the newspapers from other sources. In addition the vending machine is not readily or easily adaptable to the different costs of papers being placed in the machine. For example the daily newspapers cost say 10.cent. whereas the weekend papers cost in the vicinity of 25.cent. and cannot be sold through the vending machine. As the price differential between daily and weekend papers is high the losses incurred with the weekend papers often makes them an uneconomical proposition. Thus a vending machine which is readily adapted to be operable with different coins is a great advantage.
Accordingly the present invention aims to provide a vending machine which can be readily altered to accept various combinations of different denominations of coins and is not prone to jamming when fed with incorrect coins.